Author: D'jaevle

nocturne, by memory

I still have dark dreams.

It is late, late enough that dawn curls at the corners of the street, a promise of orange and red that threaten to spoil the perfect blanket of darkness.

It is late, and I am outside your house.

I call to you.

…

You come awake, laying silent in your bed.

A minute, two, and then you are slipping out from between the sheets, opening the front door and stepping outside.

…

Your robe slips from your shoulders.

You join the moonlight.

…

There is much I want to tell you.

I know so many new things. My teeth have only become sharper, sharp as the crease of pain in the absence of the devotion it evokes, sharp as the curved knives that fit into my hands like guilty lovers.

Much has changed, but my hunger.

My hunger is an old hunger.

…

I have no words, here.

…

We are standing, facing each other.

Waiting for sin, or salvation, or something that tastes like both.

We will wait forever, but dawn will not wait for us; it quiets all dreams.

…
……
…

My friend.

My dearest friend.

I still have dark dreams.

sunset

I've watched many sunsets, but last week I watched my first setting sun.

It was a subtle disappearing act, a splash of semicircle red that slid under the horizon with unexpected grace.

I had just finished one of the best meals I've ever had, and was sharing a drink with NE and Bear at a club next to the restaurant. We sat out back, leaning over the wooden side, smoking cloves and cigarettes. We had an unobstructed view of the sky and in the silky haze of good food glazed with excellent wine, we watched the sun dip under the water of the bay.

things not forgotten

  
 

I forget not the timbre of your voice
     soft at first
then raised, spiraling around my words
   only higher, still
       to return
as mist and sighs

I forget not the first glimpse,
   deceptively unblemished skin
      hiding the promise
   of sweetness

I forget not the way you look
      supine, or sublime
angered indifference
    at war
with beggared desire

No, I forget many things.

But you are not one of them.

  
 

nice shoes

NE suggested a slightly different take on my audio clip below; ever the benevolent dictator, I've replaced the clip with the newer version.

— 

Tonight is a time of hunger, when the wolf is close enough to the surface that I can feel the cold yellow eyes looking out.

is it ever enough, a bit of blood, the ungentle allure of the forbidden – 

is it ever enough, lips parted, eyes closed, breathing it, drowning in it –

is it ever enough, cutting against the grain instead of with it, as if the welling of need can be stemmed by nipping at the heels, chasing tail instead of heart?

I don't think it is. 

— 

May I suggest – this is best listened to alone.

[audio:Djaevle_Raw.mp3]
D'jaevle, Raw

adiago

It started with listening to lectures on the lives of classical composers while commuting to work. Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahm.

And now I find that I have immersed myself in the music, and I cannot stop.

Sonatas, concertos, symphonies, operas – one after a other, pausing when I find one that resonates, to listen again, and again, until I am lost to the strings and the wind.

pygmalion

  
 

long-limbed and lengthwise,
         in repose, upon my bed
               less and less the dark silhouette
                     at play, within my head
 
 
eyes lachrymal and cerise
         limbs argent, adorned
               an angel child with the devil's will
                     carved sibyl heart, and lithic born
 
 
reprobate, I wait unturned
          in my sanguineous desire
               to rest my head against the breast
                     and await the funeral pyre

  
 

mortality

When I was ten or eleven, an older cousin of mine told me the story of Our Lady of Fatima. The general story is relatively simple – in 1917, Mary appeared to three young children in Fatima, Portugal and shared with them three great secrets. The first two secrets described hell and the saving of souls sent there. The third secret was meant to be shared with the world in 1960 – but, at the time I was being told the story, in the mid-1980s, it had yet to be told to the public.

The reason the church had not shared this third and final secret, my cousin explained, was because it spoke of terrible things. The end of the world.

Now, as a young child, the idea of my own death was much too abstract for me to even begin to grasp. But the idea of the world itself ending was just large enough for me to understand. Frightened, I locked myself in my grandparent's bathroom and tried to cope – it felt like a large chasm had opened beneath me, and there was nothing, nothing, that could pull me away from it except for my own fraying willpower.

This was the start of my grappling with mortality and religion. Raised Catholic, I was well acquainted with the idea of an afterlife. But my increasingly logical understanding of the world around me insisted that such ideas were created to stave off the threat of oblivion. No matter what other feelings I have about religion and faith (which is another topic entirely), a part of my mind simply refuses to rely on the fact, on death, I'll be banished to hell or lifted to heaven.

For some, the idea of oblivion is a balm. But for me, my mind refuses to accept the idea that I may someday no longer exist as a sentient being.  For most of my life, my answer to this was simple.

I would avoid thinking about my own death.

For a while, this worked quite well. But the older I get, the harder a fact it becomes to ignore. It does not help that I am not in the habit of ignoring an issue. I tend to hit them head-on, deal with the consequences, and move on.

And I did, in fact, try confronting my fear, spending entire nights laying awake and staring straight into the void that I know awaits me. This lead only to a sickening feeling that refused to go away and a distinct lack of sleep.

It was time for a different approach. In my mind, I separated myself – the self that understands and accepts inevitable oblivion, and the self that goes on. Now, whenever my thinking skates along the back of mortality – such as exploring the limitations of human thinking or examining the inherent fragility of human life –  I direct the output of such though experiments to my other self. 

inherent responsibility

In a recent correspondence with a submissive friend, I was asked an interesting question:

The question:

Could a man, who says he is an experienced Dom and looking for a submissive to train and serve, be truly comfortable with himself if he also needs the relationship to be discreet, sexually friendly, and without responsibility.

My answer:

There does appear to be a contradiction inherent in what he may be seeking. I can understand a friendly, sexual, exploration of D/s. And I believe we are all capable of defining the boundaries of the relationships we build between people.

However.

Friendly exploration and finding a submissive to /train/ and /serve/ are not particularly compatible. Those terms cannot be spoken of without there being responsibility – it is inherent in the very nature of such concepts. You do not train someone without then being at least partially responsible for what happens next. We're not speaking of a playful scene amongst friends. We're speaking of an agreement between two thinking, feeling, entities, where ones taking on the responsibility to shape the other in a direct and possibly lasting fashion.

Of course, as I spoke of earlier, I dislike letting anyone dictate what is and is not possible. If such an arrangement appeals to you, there may be a way to create an enjoyable partnership with the Dom – but in truth, it sounds to me as if he is someone who wants to play at being at Dom without assuming the full mantle of responsibility that comes with it (perhaps due to an aversion to commitment, perhaps due to his relationship status that requires he be discreet).

—

Thoughts?